A wintry mix. Seasonally appropriate: deep freeze, the coming insurrection, failing lights, crude blues, Selbstportrait, and other droning figures.
The obstruction, for Mathews and McElroy, being their microphones; now, for the listener, the degraded quality of this audio file, a recording of the two great American writers in conversation on October 21 at 177 Livingston, hosted by Triple Canopy.
When Harry Mathews published his first poems in 1956, he was associated with the so-called New York School of poets, with three of whom (John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, and James Schuyler) he founded the review Locus Solus in 1961. Through his friendship with Georges Perec, he became a member of the Oulipo in 1972. Mathews is the author of six novels and several collections of poetry.
Joseph McElroy, born in Brooklyn in 1930, is the author of nine novels, including A Smuggler's Bible, Hind's Kidnap, Ancient History: A Paraphase, Lookout Cartridge, Plus, Women and Men, The Letter Left to Me, Actress in the House, and Cannonball (forthcoming).
On November 7, Triple Canopy presented Print & Demand #2, the second in an ongoing series of conversations exploring how print culture is being changed by the manifold forms of online publication and how public spaces are being constituted around those forms. The discussion, which took place at The NY Art Book Fair at MoMA PS1, included James Goggin, Jiminie Ha, and Rob Giampietro, and was moderated by Triple Canopy creative director Caleb Waldorf. It focused on the role played by design in shaping digital forms of publication: How are certain tropes of print publication—and the reading and viewing experiences they have engendered—being translated for new media (while others are being jettisoned entirely)? How has the shift from graphic design to user design, with its focus on interaction and interface, changed the way publications function?
